Task 2

HA1 - Task 2 Job Roles

Job Roles

Creative Development Roles

Game Designer
A game designer is the person behind the whole idea of the game. This person is responsible for the idea behind the game, this person knows the roots of the game and has to be very creative to have created the game usually, unless it is inspired or a remake of a game. The game designer does not have to have any skill with 3D modelling programs, they just have to come up with a concept and maybe some rough drawings to give the rest of the production time an idea of what they need to create.

One well known game designer is Will Wright  who is the creator of The Sims series. He was responsible for the whole idea behind the game and without his game designing abilities, we may not have the Sims game series that many of us have came to love to this day.
Game designers such as Will Wright or the entrepreneurs behind the games that we all love today, the key people in the creation of games we love such as the Grand Theft Auto series, the Metal Gear series, Minecraft and Super Mario Bros, without these game designers and their unique ideas. our beloved games would never have came to be and they would never have been distributed for consumption.

The pay of a games designer often varies, as their income usually depends on the overall success of a product.


Level Editor
The level editor is someone that creates the levels in a game, they set up the structure of the level and help to determine where everything in the level will go, where the characters will re-spawn, what should happen where, and they have to make sure the organisational structure of the level, is relevant to the main story of the game.


One example of a level editor is Kim Swift, a Level Editor for the game Portal who had a vast impact on the overall design of the level structure of the game Portal. She is quoted as saying, "Originally the environments were complex, but that was the wrong idea for Portal. Because we're introducing a new concept, it was best to keep it bare bones. In one section, all you were supposed to do was put a box on a button and open a door. One player literally spent 30 minutes trying to push a shelf onto the button, meanwhile, the box was sitting right there. That's how the clinical environment design came to be." As you can see, she as a level editor had a vast impact on the overall outcome of the game Portal of which she worked on.

The average pay for a level editor in the UK is around £23,000 a year.


Lead Artist
The lead artist is the main artist of the team, that handles most of the artistic work such as concept art and modelling and instructs the other artists on what they have to do, relevant to the game designers idea and they have to ensure that the art created is relevant to how the game designer wants the game to look.

Their main roll is to ensure that their own and their understudies work is all created to the appropriate and relevant standard, as instructed by higher up members of the production process, like the game designer.

The roll of the lead artist can be the highest paid position in the art department, reflecting the skills and experience required.

lead artists can often be in control of initial artwork, that will determine how individual game assets will look upon finalisation of the product, as you can see below, there is some rough sketches of initial art development for a game.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-24XPcyEI7ImhaYrcf9ZbfcoCkApF07EDpLPclpI0proDRQap8mvL_I0oMM42bepNTq6RjlfVL961637mrN1LZiIOtrDKalpnkRnPBE8ZGdOmjWmTu0OylZ6wbk6ME1uj9D6J4b9IAIdd/s320/Ice+Level1.png

The average pay for a lead artist depends on overall experience and work that will be undertaken by the lead artist and understudies.

Technical Artist
A technical artist summarized:

• They act as a bridge between the Artists and Programmers working on a game project
• Ensuring art assets can be easily integrated into a game in the production process. without losing the artistic vision or exceeding the platform’s overall technical limits
• Investigating new exiting techniques to be utilized within production as well as implementing them and training a team to use them

If you work for EA as a technical artist, you could earn £40,000+ a year.

Artist
An artist is mainly responsible for the creation of concept art for a game, or perhaps art pieces that are imported into the game, such as 2D implementations like framed artwork in house models or graffiti you might come across in gameplay,  or even a wanted poster for a convict in a wild west cowboy based game such as Red Dead Redemption.

Examples of artists work in games:

GTA V graffiti art work

http://cdn3.gamepur.com/images/gta-v/gta-v-secrets-easter-eggs-13.jpg

Red Dead Redemption misisng poster artwork

http://guidesmedia.ign.com/guides/80427/images/590/reddead-un_45.jpg

The average pay for a game artist in the UK is around £26,000 a year.

Animator
The animator is responsible for animations in a game, the animations are key for any game as they stop models from just being inanimate. Animations bring a game to life and are needed for characters to move, environments to seem alive and stories to be told.

When animators create their animations for games, they use processes such as rigging to help them full animate a character, in which they add bones to a character model to make its movement more life like and animate.

Below you can see an example of the rigging process used my animators.

http://www.oliversimonnet3d.com/images/gallery/rigging/ATLAS/atlas1.png

The average pay for an animator in the UK is around £23,000 a year.

Audio Engineer
An audio engineer is responsible for the sound featured in a game, the sound is a necessity as without sound, the game would lose interest and it would be hard to understand what is going on in the game.

The sound engineer has to ensure that all the sounds that are recorded and created from scratch by them and other sound engineers match the story of the game and the animations, this is a difficult job and is quite time consuming. Some sounds are usually sampled from there free sources though, as audio engineers don't always have all the time they need to make every sounds for a game, that is why you often hear the same sounds in completely different games.

Audio Engineers often use programs such as Audacity to created and edit sounds for various video games.

Below is a screenshot of what the Audacity software looks like.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Audacity-Screenshot.jpg

The average starting pay for an audio engineer in the UK is around £13,000 a year.

Technical Development

Game Programmer
The game programmer is responsible for the programming of the game, the programmer has to ensure that the game is functional and that everything links together.

A programmer helps to determine what actions lead to what consequences and what the repercussions of a characters choices are and how they change the story, affect animations and sounds.

Programming can be a very hard process to master and you have to learn various programming languages, similar to the one you can see below.


http://codecollege.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/GamemakerCode.jpg

The average pay for a game programmer in the UK is around £26,000 a year.

Lead Programmer
The lead programmer is the programmer who has the most experience and skills in programming, they are in charge of all the other programmers and have to ensure that all programmers are working according to the story and their programming is relevant to the work of the sound engineers, animators and the rest of the team.

Programmers have to work in sync with each other, so the lead programmer has to ensure that all code and programming is relevant to the work of the whole team and final production of the game.

Programming is considered the hardest job in the game design field by many people and it takes a vast amount of concentration and dedication to master.

The average pay for a lead programmer in the UK is around £44,000 a year.

Project Implementation

Project Manager/Producer
The project manager/producer, is responsible for ensuring that all employees work on the game, are work according to the given time scale and that they are completing their individual projects according to the guidelines of the game designer.

The project manager/producer, is often in charge of elements of production such as risk assessments and overall safety regulations within the production studios for the creation of a product.

The average pay for a project manager/ producer n the UK is around £51,000 a year.

Assistant Producer
This assistant producer, as you can see from the name, is the main assistant of the producer, they are responsible for receiving orders and details from the game designer and passing them onto the employees, so they can carry out what is necessary, this is to save the head producer from having to deal with all elements of leading the production alone.

The average pay for a assistant producer in the UK is around £33,000 a year.

External Producer
The external producer is a producer that comes from outside the main structure of the game development team, they are responsible for links between the team creating the game and other companies interest in the game and handle matters such as organising distribution techniques and arranging appropriate advertisement.

The average pay for an external producer in the UK is around £33,000 a year.

Creative Director
The creative director is responsible for the creative side of the game, they help produce ideas and concepts for the game that other might not think of, they help to give the game a good flow and make sure it does not appear boring or that the player will become disinterested when playing the game upon release.

The creative director is also in charge of ensuring all creativity is monitored and the game is created in line with the initial ideas of the head game designer.

The average pay for a creative director in the UK is around £49,000 a year.

Quality Assurance

QA Tester
The QA tester is responsible for ensuring that the product that is being created or upon completion is of a high quality, they are responsible foe ensuring the game is fit for release and that it has been created to the standard that the game designer intended.

QA testers have to check through games for any bugs, from the smallest to the largest. They have to carry out repetitive processes and keep track of their work to ensure the game can be finalized and released for distribution without faults.

Below is an example of a QA document.

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/fjNd9P6IqaI/maxresdefault.jpg

The average pay for a Q tester in the UK is around £20,000 a year.

Business Development

Public Relations Manager 
Public relations managers in the games industry, are in charge of helping a game company, maitain positive public image. This is done using different forms of media to convey positive messages to a target audience. Public relations managers direct special presentations including game presentation shows and media campaigns.

The job of a Public Relations Manager can often be a tough one, you handle a large part of how a games company is viewed by the public and often have to travel around the world conveying the same positive messages.

The average pay for a PR manager in the UK is around £44,000 a year.

Product Manager

The product manager is responsible matters such as the selling of the game and how the game will be marketed. They are in charge of the people that create the artwork for the case of the game and anything to do with the marketing of  the game, when the product manager is comfortable with the game and the way in which it will be advertised, the game is then sent into retail.

The average pay for a product manager in the UK is around £49,000 a year.

Marketing Executive
In the games industry, marketing executives are in charge of developing marketing campaigns to promote a gaming product. It is a varied role that includes taking on planning, advertising, public relations, event organisation, product development, distribution, sponsorship and research. The work is often challenging and fast paced within this roll.

The average pay for a marketing executive in the UK is around £23,000 a year.

Marketing Manager
In the games industry,  a marketing managers job is to plan the best ways of promoting the employer's game. A marketing manager has to be organised and successful at communicating messages and ideas.

The average pay for a marketing manager in the UK is around £40,000 a year.